Economy At Second Life

Did you know that SL has its own citizens who can earn through the virtual existence off the Community. For example you could buy space in plush locations and set up a pub or disco and make a decent earning.

Many people became millionaires just by being on the community and earning Linden dollars. There is a real Real Estate in which million of Sq. Mtres. are sold and bought every year.

VR Innovation

A new VR has been designed which will give you immersive illusion while exercising at home that you are into another world cycling in a faraway town and seeing strange things to keep boredom at bay.
ALL this while you pedal your cycle and wear a goggle to give you the experience. This is quite an innovative application of virtual reality which gives a regular exerciser more inspiration to do exercise and improve health. It breaks the monotony and demotivation of working in the same setting at all the times.

Now Robots would be Your Wives

Good news for nerds, robots are being developed which would be a able to play the role of your wives. For those with sexual dysfunction would now be able to enjoy the benefits of socialising with a female.

Also those people who are shy of women but are not technology averse would also be able to use the robot to learn the social skills to deal with women. All in all a very good news for all those who love technology and Social Robots are on their way to enrich your lives in ways hitherito not possible till now.

Telepresence

As the bandwidth of the internet increases to GBPS range it would be possible for you to be present at two places at one time. YOu could be attending a meeting at a far off place interecting with others in real time. This is happening now but with glitches through Conferencing but no 3D images are possible.

Also Nokia has launched internet radio for some of the high end models and is soon planning to roll it out on other models also.

Server Virtualisation, Consolidation and TCO

Using Hardware and Application consolidation results in cost savings through reduced power and maintenance of the server cost and buying fewer licences of software. Hense you can think of using virtualiation and consolidation to reduce your data center bill or your server farm cost of operating.

New investment in Hardware or software should be done taking into consideration all these factors as the new blade and rack servers are very high on computing power and power efficiency and hense all these factors can very easily contribute towards reducing the Total Cost of Operation and Maintenence. Also the architecture results in reduced real estate requirements which is so very much crucial in running the operations in a Real Estate costly ( Read Cosmopolitan ) environment.

Also simplicity in the data Center also results in ease with which scaling can be done by taking into account the upgradibility of processor accomodated by your motherboard. Backup and restoration is also simplified.

But one point is that high availability would be required as if one node fails multiple applications can go down, hense increasing the criticality of the Appllications stored on these architetures.

Open Source Vs. Revenue Model

Its been a debate of late if open source is good or not. I think its situational. For developing countries and for those who can not afford it gives a cheap source of software which can be bundled with the hardware cost. But I think to continue with the revenue genaration model is required for the excellence and innovation to be continued and benchmarks pushed upwards at all the times.

Hense both open source and paid model should be continued at all the times.

Driverless Autonomous Cars

Now they have test run Autonomuos cars in actual traffic for 60 miles with mostly meeting with success and a rare accident and a few misses. But old people and handicapped people will soon be able to be assited by Robo Driver which would assist you on long drives and also help you to park your car automatically with out the assistance of any driver. It is equipped with sensors and devices which will help it to detect obstacles and other targets and use AI to overcome situations at road.
Well look forward to buying one from Mercedes in a couple of years which would be totally glitch free.

Nintendos Medical Application

Nintendo Wii Medico

Wii has a number of games like Boxing, Golf, Bowling, Base Ball, Tennis et al where motion gloves are used to play and interact with the console. Hense it is being used in Canada to treat stroke patients to recover and develop and strengthen their muscles. Hense it appears that gaming is no longer only a dysfunctional activity spurring violence in kids but also do have its own positives which are being appreciated with passing time.

Video Games Being used For Education

In US games are being used for experiential teaching. For teaching concepts which can not be taught in Class Room. For example to teach ethics in real life like a decision may have to be taken if stealing some ones organs from cemetery would be justified to save some ones life.

I think it’s a concept whose idea has come. It makes learning a fun activity and teaches higher order concepts in a much simpler manner.

A Supercomputer on Chip

A Supercomputer of the Size of Chip

Yes its Strange but a near possibility in about 5-10 years if every thing goes right. We always heard of memory going the chip way but now we hear of Supercomputer on chip. How it is made possible. Well by using optical signals than electric ones using electro – optical modulators. The speed of data transfer would increase by a factor of 100 and the energy expended would decrease by a factor of 10. Size would be 10-1000 times smaller than a typical super computer of today.

So data intensive applications requiring mission critical speed would be made possible at a miniature level saving on space and power consumption.

A Laptop A Child

First there was this attempt to create a 100 Dollars laptop for students of less privileged countries Now comes the effort from India to develop a full functional HIFi Notebook PC for a cost of 10,000 to 15,000 INR. Its an attempt to create equal opportunity for all and bridge the digital divide which exists in India and else where.

Also lot needs to be done in the field of User Interface which is most probably going to be a any language voice input or control via brain electric waves. Research is already on in this field and lot more is expected in the coming 1/2 a decade.

I hope we are able to accoomlpish the goal of having 1 laptop in every house by 2014, so that e-commerce and education can take a good leap ahead. Also I hope that we are able to build in same capabilities even in the Mobile to build a business network where every one in the world is connected to every one else by just a two node social network.

Ad Democratisation

Hey I think there are number of sites like IndiaTimes blog in India where you blog and the site hoster makes money, I think this is a very outdated way of transacting business and users should be provided of making enough money online depending on their popularity and content produced.

Recently 1500 facebook users placed ads in their profile page against the rules. Some internet revolution of sorts. More of it required all over.

Translation Software Galore

Lots of software in Market. Recently Japan developed one which works on Cell and converts words for tourists. India has developed one recently which translates 10 languages. But the ultimate is yet to come. Ultimate software according to me would be one which would do the translation realtime with minimal of lag and result into telephonic talks between people of various languages possible. Or face to face talk with the assistance of m/c's.

Come on scientists we are waiting for your cest works.

Muscical Robots

Previously I reported on Robots which could play muscical instruments, I could further gather that they play violen and Trumpet. Any one of you tinking of starting a Zombie Orchestra contact Toyota.

Your Dream Notepad at 36,000 Rs.

Dell Vostro 1400 Notebook

14.1 " Screen
1280 X 800 Resolution
Core 2 Duo Processor T 5270
Vista Home Basic Preinstalled
1 GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM @ 667 MHz
150 GB Sata HDD @ 5400 MB

I think a good notebook for your Video, Entertainment and General Purpose Applications.

Intelligent Tutors : Virtual Teacher

OK its ready for Middle School and Primary. A one to One AI powereer tutor which will be able to sense the student mood and accordingly modify the delivery mechanism or make changes to the voice and subject.

The mouse used would be an intelligent one monitoring heart rate and deducing the mood of the student. Human may always be required for educating the students but this could work as an educational supplement.

I am waiting for the ultimate product where higher education would be interactive and fun o learn using virtual teachers like the Eve which has been developed.

Vista OS is a Bad Product

The virdict is out. Its lot more slower than XP SP2. Cool new addinium. Some claim there is more stability but for me, XP is stable and robust enough apart from that most software of use work on it.

Microsft is coming out with SP3 for XP which is good news for India which would increase speed by 10% over SP2 also a SP1 is expected for Vista to improve speed.

Hope you made right upgradation choices.

Collapsable Cars ans Scooters

It is being touted as the new mode of transport for the modern cluttered cosmopolitan cities. A taiwan companySYM has designed a Scooter and car model which is collapsable and solves the commuting problem in congested urban center. The car will have no engine and will have a robot wheel which will be self contained and the car could rotate 360 degrees to circumvent the navigation problem. It would save space and would be electrically charged as it would not require fossil fuel hense leading to a saving in cost and pollution. Anybody picks any vehical from stations and airports and park them elsewhere.

CSR in Commuting, good enough.

Focus Vs. Hedging Risk

I am a regular reader of TechCrunch.com one of the leading technical blog of blogosphere. Half the times there are news of sell outs and dead pools. ( Companies which wind ). Which lead me to ponder on these points as to what makes a company click focus or hedging risk. Put it in other words does diversification increases risk or does it reduce the risk. Or is it such a simple question at all or is it circumstantial and dependent on the Situation. Common wisdom is having divergent business reduces dependence on recesssion in one sector or vertical and hedges risk. But then it requires Rent of Diversification and that is Management Talent. Different management talent is required to handle more businesses. Much more data is required to be crunched and much more agility has to be shown. The top management needs to be at toe all the times and is required to show endurance in managment, while thinking of the future of the organisation ( Strategic manoeuvres ) and also firefighting the daily or weekly crises which the companies face.

Dozens of books can be written on the subject, what you think, what is your take.

Technology To Reverse Aging

Scintists have developed the technique to stop a geen which is responsible for ageing purpose. This gene can be stopped locally at any organ level or face to restore the youth of the organ or the face. The gene if fully stopped doesnt stop aging completely as it is required for the functioning of certain immune system of the body and if tried to restore youth for the whole body can cause death , also it is not known if the effect is reversible ie do aging start again or is it permanently restored.So technology for youth restoration is on its way. Hang on guys, Now U will be able to inhabit the Earth for ever.

Games To Assuage Violent Urges

Creative musical games have been launched for both PS3 and MIcrosoft XBOX 360 which can be used to play music , learn music and evaluate ones music skills and perform along with a group. The same will help youngsters to concentrate on something creative and harmonical than compared to the normal violent games inducing violent behaviour in Kids.

Guitar Hero II is a music video game developed by Harmonix Music Systems and published by RedOctane.

Other softwares to create virtual music like Guitar Rig et al are also available so that you can make use of your desktop for doing something more worthwhile than just some routine din.

Spamming Continues To Hog Corporate Productivity

Total spam has crossed 10 trillion mark the same as the total number of mails floating on the internet. With Unified Communications tilting the balance of Communication towards email and VOIP the problem of Spam is all set to disconcert the smugness of Corporate Honchos with hoards of Green Bucks being lost per employee in lost productivity.

There are tools to avoid spammers but there are tools to hack these. But I think what people call spammers are just plain vanilla happy Marketers. When you market its sauve and decent, when others do the same it is spamming.

Maybe people can adopt stratgies to overcome spam as maintaining separtae e-Mails for critical and non critical accounts and not sharing the details of critical one with any web site. Apart from the normal filtering and blocking of domains.

Also habitual and useless spammer directory could be built on the lines of folksonomy, that anyone feeling strongly against a domain notifies the ICANN and based on some critical reportage the domains could be blocked by the ICANN.

OK Signing off,
Rajeev Vashisht.

Robots To Help Elders

Till now there have been robots who deliver mail and vacuum clean the floor, but their navigation has been controlled via pre-fed maps of the area's in which they work. This approach is difficult to programme domestic helps who have to encounter a terrain which is not constant. People place things here and there and the room map is not constant with use. Hense arises the need to programme the Robots with Sight. Efforts are being done in this quarter by trying to use a Web Camera to work as the sight for the Robot so that they can assist the elderly and those handicaped or sick.

More on this in later posts.

Propagation Diagrams In Website Development

I have visited a number of web site and seen that many changes made are not immediately visible in other parts of the website even if the change is critical. To avoid such stupid blunders found in best of websites, I propose a new web development tool called propagation diagram.

For every update operation in the website draw where it will effect the other parts of the website and decide if the change is critical, non critical or so. If critical the change should be made immediately and the web server cache should be also updated immediately. If non critical the change should be made in the database itself.

So are you adopting propagation diagrams today.

Zoho Office Available Online

To circumvent the problem of glitchy and expensive intternet connectivity in places like hotels, Airport, Taxis et al the Zoho office has gone offline using Google gears, the opensource browser plug in of google.

Now work offline with your office documents edit and save them with internet connectivity and sync them to online version at your convenienece and on the availability of internet connection.

Amazons E-Book reader

Amazon has launched an ultra thin 10 ounce E-Book reader. Retailing a tad high at 399 $ the piece can store equivalent of 200 books and comes with a free wi fi connectivity to download books. Best sellers can be bought at $9.99 only.

Amazon competes with sony in the field of E-Books.

CPU less Computer Model Launched By Dell

Dell has created a new Desktop which has all wireless connections between accessories and just one power cord. Also the main innovation is that there is no CPU unit in the PC ie you just have the Desktop Monitor , Keyboard and the mouse. Obviously the innovation in the desktop has been modelled after the Laptop and notepad sibling. Very nice to know that space can be saved in a reality hungry world. Also lot of complexity is reduced and anything simple is a better design. As they say miniaturisaion is the key to all luxury. Although contended by some.

By the way apple already has a model by the same type.

Technology Needs Time To traction and Adoption

Old habits die hard. Take the example of our own e-Books although versions and use have exsited for decades but adoption has been very slow. New versions of e-Books have been developed of late by companies like the Sony et al but use is limited due to reasons like high cost and inhibition on the part of the user to adopt new technology. Also new technologies are untested.

For example little have been said about the ill effects of computers. And you will find less literature in main stream media about the ill effects of Cellular phones. Customers are live Guinny pigs in this corporate led experimentation of technolgy on the people of Earth.

E-Books with adoption will tend to get less costly and more feature rich and would eventually be adopted to a wider degree by users. Innovative features like books coming with bundled offer of preloaded Best Sellers and trial subscriptions of magazines will make marketing of the product more easier.

Also BRIC economies will take a while before adopting the produt.

Indian Switch Companies

While most IT companies of the west seem to grow at snail pace, Indian companies are growing at breakneck growth rates of 40-130. Most comapnies with higher base are growing a Healthy 40% rate and showing healthy growth rate in net profit in spite of growing pressure on margins due to an appreciating rupee and emergant challenge from China and other growth oriented Asian economies, and hense the growth of Big Blues are paled in comparison of Indian Switch Comapnies.

It also shows that companies can be grown just on the basis of organic growth and not on inorganic growth. Tech Mahindra is a company although small but grew its revenue 130% and its employee base by 90% in one year. It shows that organic growth is possible , and rapid scaling makes sense. Other bigger companies like Infosys and TCS have shown high employee scaling of upto 40% a year, but are now planning for growth through acquisition as talent is difficult to find.

Thought Waves To Control Online Avatars

Technology is being developed to control Avatars through thought waves tapped via electrodes attached to the scalp. Although yet to be commericialised or fully exploited, the technology is yet to perfect in controlling the online avatar. Although it is better than the keyboard version of controls.

Also web cams are being used to detect user motion and control avatars online. Lot of research is being carried out lately in the field of thought control and soon we would have a technology which would enable complicated data transfer to computer memory via imagination and thinking. With more research the accuracy and bandwidth of such data transfer methods is only going to increase in the coming days.

Image Search Technology

Google image search searches only for images tagged with English on the net, but there are Zillions of photos on the net which are tagged in numerous other languages but can not be found by google since the meta data is in English.

http://www.panimages.org/ is a site which searches data by co-relating and translating the term in 350 online dictionaries and turning up almost 57 times on an average image results. Very handy for people of countries who uses language other than English or French.

It seaches for photos on the net and on flickr and shows them in two different panes . Try out a fun tool to try out.

Biometric Technology

Biometrics have been previously been used for ATM authentication and Laptop security, but now Germany in Europe is all set to use it for Credit Card less transactions. It is being used as a substitute to master card and the authentication is done directly by swiping the finger against the m/c. The chances of fraud due to theft et al are minimised to a great extent by this method and chance of a duplicate finger is 10 million to one. Highly improbable to hack.
Security methods are being developed at breakneck speed to keep the uneven minded hackers and online pirates at bay. US has developed a method by which secure credit card transactions can be done by ceating a one time credit card number for use with non-secure or non-participating e-commerce sites.
In India people are apprehensive of Credit Card products due to strong arm tactic used even by reputed banks like ICICI and HSBC under media scanner and court scrutiny. Recently Maharstra govt. has taken measures to ensure that agencies used by Banks do not hire con men and use gentle means to get their money back.

Now Technology for Disabled Children

A robot UD1 has been developed which allows children with cognitive disorders like Down's syndrome to cope with their early child mobility issues. This can be done by using a robot to move about. Other normal children who are more mobile, seeing whem a disabled child may develop complexes. It helps them stay safe while moving about as the robot is containing sensors which can detect obstacles and move in a safe distance from them by navigating properly.

Thats cool. Version UD2 would also let an adult control the robot apart from the child ( 7 months child can use it) and the automatic control which would enable parents to train the kids in complex movements leading to enhanced cognition.

Industrial Robots and Safety

Industrial Robots were so far harmful to human working in their vicinity. Like they didn't know that humans are frugal by nature and would accidently damage them.

Now germany has created a robot with 6 sensors in various parts of the arm which detects an obstacle like human and gently nudges the human as if to tell get out of my way. The robot is yet to get commercialised, but it makes the life of a Human Being more safe in Industrial settings. Robots have been a part of Industrial Workforce for decades doing dangerous work like welding et al.

Scratch Setting New Paradigms in Children Education

It is a tool developed by MIT to promote innovation and creative learning in kids of all aged 8 and the like. Used to create Animation,Movie,Music et al using graphical interfaces and tools. IN effect a graphical small apps development system to encourage creative thinking in children and reduce destructive thoughts and enable healthy growth.

There are featured projcets, Most viewed et al neatly categorised. Students are encouraged to download others projects and learn collectively and also form children communities.

Pedal powered Laptop

MIT university students have created a Laptop which uses 12 Volts and 30 watts power generated from a exercising cycle which generates upto 72 watts of problem. The laptop functions smoothly with the energy created by cycling.

This could reduce power requirements in your home as well as the total energy requirements from the conventional fossil fuel electricity generation.

Any such programmes will only result in better life for owners of technological products.

New Battery Coat

A new coat has been developed which can generate electricity from vibrations and movements while you walk and can charge mobile and I-Pod batteries on the go. Good energy conservation techniques which can also be used by soldiers to charge battery of communication equipment while on the battlefield.

Now it could also be used by males to avoid battery by passers by in India.

Robots To Play Muscical Instruments

Robots have been developed which can play Music. Robots can play upto four instruments have been developed. Soon you could see orchestra where the Music is arranged by robots and soon you could even have robots which sing perfect tunes.

Chat Based Search Cha Cha

ChaCha is a new search engine technology which uses chat based results and have been found to be unsuccessful because of prank chatters. Other approaches to Internet Search Engine technology have been like natural language processing which have largely been unsuccessful. I propose the following changes which could be successful in the market.

The idea is good, maybe instead of chat a results page should be displayed, where as historical questions and answers could be categorised and similar questions couldf be given ready made results pages. Also researc h shoiuld be done and output pages for most common search terms could be created in advance and updated as the search results may include more internet start - ups.

Fuel Cell Technology

A new technology has been developed which will reduce the dependence on fossil fuels like petrol and diesel. The technology uses industrial waste and uses bacteria to produce hydrogen. The process uses 1/10th of energy used by Hydrolosis of water and produces 1 lot more eletrical energy and hense is very efficient. The technology uses industrial waste for the purpose.

The bacteria produces protons and neutrons by consuming acetic acid which is present in t he waste.

Business Technological Idea's for Companies With Capital

1. A innovation in Cellular Phones could be Aromatic Phones which can be used for Aromatic Therapy and could be used for lifting a bad mood or depression.

2. If a phone is built with Biometric Identification built into chip then a bank of people who can use the phone can be built and could be used only by the authorised person even if it is stolen or lost.

3.MFD Phones are full of glitches, the problem could be solved by having separate chip for each functionality optimised for a function and a general purpose chip for concurrent use.

4. YOur Teastall worker and President of US using same service. Can't digest that. Need for premium services for premium phones. How could be that.
Having a service with extra bandwidth for premium customers who can pay more so that they can amplify the signal and use effects like reverb for business, and others for romantic talk or kinky talk. Also lovers could dedicate customised songs to each other and play radio jock and have loads of other fun.

5.If nano mechanical sound harvesting probes could be built they could be used for harvesting sound energy and converting into electical charge for use.
Normal vibrations from Radio , TV and Music system and other sources of high noise and vibration could be used to generate electricity by placing a probe machine near the source of vibration.

Also no more wars for oil.

Applications of Tactile Display

Recently I read an article on Tactile Graphical Display in Times and thought of two novel applications which could be used to improve HUman life and entertainment experience respectively,

1. A mobile for the blind with a tactile display and keys with braille keys. The tactile display could be used for feeling the messages, dialled numbers and Multimedia Messages.

2. A 3-D I-Pod where videos could have a degree of 3-dimensionality.

Apple Technology Pays Off

Apple Haapily JIngles its cash register with record topline and bottomline growth. Topline grew by 28% and profits soared 81% in the quarter ended september. Where it easily surpassed the indutry figures for the same which were 19% and 43%.

The game changers were 10.2 million i-pods sold, 1.11 million i-phones sold and 2.16 million of i-macs sold. Apple is a company which has immense scope for growth as it has recently launched leopard operating system. Apple continues to innovate and microsft blatantly and belatedly copies microsoft product features and ideas and stays ahead? Could it be because of bad marketing.

Leopard OS is lot better than Vista according to experts and also the process of reducing the prices did its own good on the fortune of Apple which is now a 160 billion valued company.

Voice Controlled Input : Alternate to using Mouse

For those who are handicapped there is good news a voice controlled input device has been created. You use various sounds like a, ow, aw its to move the cursor up down sideways et al on the screen. Also you can use these voice commands by varying pitch , quality, etc to make it move a particular distance or carry out certain actions.
The various things which can be done by using it are playing games, drawing sketches etc. The future of user interface is Thought Interface vai Brain Waves which is expected of a few years down.

Bio Modelling Technology

Is Nature the best. Taking cue from nature to be perfect some scientists have developed a submarine after studying the anatomy of Fish. They have developed a system by which slightest hydraulic movements can be detected from very far and can be used for underground navigation and collision detection system. It may also be used for guided stalking target demolishing missile.
Every technology has its good and evil sides. For example Nuclear Technology was developed for Civil Energy Generation and for good wars, but people use it to threaten neighbous and society at large.
Another example where biomodelling is being tried again assuming that nature is the best guide is brain simulation and AI applications. Although it is at its primitive stages with people not able to simulate even a second of Mouse Brain Activity.
After all aliens may not be god's and World could just be a MMOG or Simulation study with each component having perception ability. Is any study being made to find if nature is perfect, please post your comments freely.

Technological Toys

Toys are increasingly getting more and more technical in nature. There are dogs which remember your names and change there size on patting for 91 dollars US. There are Barbie dolls cum MP3 players. There is increasing inclination for the toys to get more and more high tech like remote controlled Cars et al.
Recently Australia recalled and prohibited import of Chinese toys because they were found to have used a chemical which metabolised into a deadly Date Rape chemical. Previously Mattel had recalled its toys.
There is increasing scope of better interactive and innovative toys with AI intelligence and Robotics developing at a breakneck speed.

Need For Relevant Advertisements

Google ads displayed are mostly adsense related or blogger related. I think no advet. product in market is up to the market. The user should be given an option to choose which advt.'s to display on their blogs. Most bloggers life is difficult and cumbersome sometimes even measly. But love of blogging makes them pursue it as a hobby or as Media Lighthouses.

Also I think some work should be done with Cyber Copyright so that whatever people publish becomes copyrighted automatically free of cost and Main media should encourage blogger to enter mainstream, by playing ethical. Also newspapers could offer subsidized advrt. space in newspaper to generate more support for alternate media.

The Open Source

Flickr and Google sports photos of various resolutions taken by professionals and amateurs to share their caretive artistic instincts with public. Flickr has over 1 billion photographs. Now scientists from University of Washington have developed a programme which collects all the photographs of a famous place and generates a 3d Model of it. Soon they think they will be able to compose the 3D model of cities altogether.

Cars have been developed which run without driver in Auto mode. These cars can be used in military and civilian applications like to assist handicapped drivers, and those on long drives at night.

A TV has been developed which can play content from USB devices like moble, flash memory and I-Pod or MP3 player.

AMD's Strategy

What the processor market shows is that Monopolies can be broken. 10 Years back no one would have believed that AMD would one day have 30% market share that too in a sophisticated market like Notebook processor. But it unshackled the clunky and agressive intel who once thought that it was invincible.
What AMD needs to focus on is branding and Marketing initiatives. It has some better than intel processor ranges and features but the consumer is shy to risk because of lack of product knowledge. AMD needs to invest more in creating product education and awareness. After all no one including intel is invincible, take the Nokia example with Battery fisco resulting in a sure dent in market share.
AMD could auger well by positioning its products differently than intel and go into JV with manufacturers from emerging economies who are now concentrating on SemiConductor reasearch and hardware.

Alacrity, Technology and Distribution

Media is a great business to be in but one thing is for sure, technology is changing the way business is done worldover. The print magazine for example have seen drastic reduction is readership and some have even closed down due to lack of patronage.

This requires that you rethink about your publication business today. The threat side includes online magazines and e-Books and Papers which are set to replace the way business is done. Also the best way out is to start a online presnse with advertising as a revenue model and slowly start with subscription model. Also you can earn though product referrals and tie up with PR agencies.

Social Networking A Fad

India has caught on with the social networking bug. Surely despite its various limitations one has the ability to network, make friends, gossip and collect meaningful info from the net. One can be abreast of latest trends and can give a legspace to their creative instincts and even get recognition and make moolah in the process.
Orkut is most popular in India followed by Facebook, Hi5 and My Space all in top 100 most favorite web sites with orkut at number 3 rank. It remains to be seen if the trend continues or it turns out to be just another fad.

Organic LCD's

After a while of monopoly profits, innovtion hits the LCD and Plasma TV market under the belt. The 3mm OLCDs being offered by Sony is in the Ultra Thin Flat TV's, They are good for sports and action movies watching as they involve good strength to display high speed frames.
Surely the cannibalisation of some of the sales of their existing products are surely on the anvil. Samsung are the world leaders in LCD's and Sony are the followers.

Conning Their Ways to Bank Online : The New Age Online Pirates

One Liyaqut Ali married 50 girls though online sites. Hense if you are tring to meet your soulmate via Jeevan saathi, Simply Marry or Bharat Matrimony web sites, be on your guide. Although these sites carry out a preliminary security drill on their subjects but it is by no means fool proof, hense you are advised to use detective servic to crack the nut.

Google to Launch G-Phone

India is slowly becoming a market which can be ignored by companies at their own peril. Take for example Apple , it did not launch its I-Phone in Indian market simultaneously with other markets because of production bottlenecks and constraints, but Google is launching G-Phone which will be simultaneously launched in Indian market also.
Apart from technological companies others like automobile companies are also especially concentrating on their product portfolio for the Indian market. Innovating for Indian market is paying off with growing number of millionaires even the companies selling premium products stand to benefit.

Another benefit which google has is that it is tying up with multiple service providers unlike apple which only supports AT & T officially.

Blade Servers

Blade servers are used to create a high density computing experience for the users. Blade servers aer mounted on a chassis in either 5 or 10 per chassis depending on the user requirement. It not only saves valuable reality space but also can be used to decrease overall TCO of managing a datacenter by sharing the heating and cooling plus other support costs.
Blade servers can be used where you require a highly scalable system whichgrows along with the growth of business so that individual blades can be added as and when required.

Power and Cooling

Power and Cooling forms a very important factor in a Data Center Management. Power requirements and cooling requirements both can come down to a very low percentage if Multicore system is used or Blade servers are deployed. A critical measure of efficiency is the cooling reqired for a particular level of heating which in turn depends on power. The temperature of the data ceneter should be kept at a range bound degrees as any deviation from the levels can cause serious malfunctions in Data Center and cause downtime and outages which are detrimental to the business success.

Heating is an important factor in Data Center design as with increase in reality costs savings due to form factor efficiency is capped by the heat dissipated by powerful smaller servers as only 20-35% of Data Centers space can be used to place rack computers.

Self Sufficient Laptops

Laptops are increasingly becoming a wonderful piece of technology. Some months back the average weight used to be anywhere between 2.5 kgs to 2.99 kgs which is now come down to 1 KG square. Also the piece used to be without any camera now it comes with inbuilt 2.0 MP web cam. Also there are inbuit speakers and high configuration systems available at a fraction of cost of the previous rates.

So a laptop can double up as a personal entertainment device as well as your business companion. You can work and stay connected to the world on the fly while being completely mobile.

MMOG

Online games are highly evolved with Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Milllions of people take avatar and play games with in virtual environment. These games are also used for simulation studies in the field of Medicine and behavioural science for example Irrational behaviour. Some are free and some require to be subscribed to. Shattered Galaxy and Boundless Planet are a few of strategy oriented games. You can learn how to strategise using these games and sometimes strike gold because sometimes when you get a useful idea you can use it to launch realtime business.

Document Technology

There are new applications by xerox in Document management technology.What are they. They are as following.
1. A document redaction software which is used to erase parts of documents so that only authorised people like top managers and inside people can see them. Also this gives rise to intra document security as separate documents need not be created for haring or security purposes.
2. Another application renders parts of print on an ordinar paper illegible to people but can be viwed only under specil ink, to mark passport of dangerous crminals who are beyond the claws of law or dangerous paedophiles who can not be caught on camera.

Server Energy Efficiency and Consolidation

Servers are getting highly power hungry and cooling requirements of servers are inceasing with each passing day. 25% of a data centers cost is only spent in footing energy bills, which is quite a large percentage sometimes going up to 44%. Also real estate costs more in cosmopolitans and any form saving would add to total cost pruned by managers of datacenter.

To reduce the cost of energy consumed now a days the rtend is to go in for multicore servers, dual, quad or eight core servers from sun, IBM , AMd et al are already there in the market catering to the data center demand.

Multicore servers can reduce power requirements upto 66% and can also be used for server virtualisation.

Storage Virtualisation Technology

So if you have an organisation wide storage which may be spread across network servers or multiple storage devices like tapes, opical, Sata et al then if you want to make it easier for users to use it then it is better to go for Storage Virtualisation. IN this the actual details of the storage device and physical location as well as the type of storage can be hidden from the user. One advantage could be that ordinary users can carry out complicated ack up and recovery operations and the method is highly user friendly.

The storage is given an abstraction. There are hardware and software devices to attain storage virtualisation. If you use hardware devices for packet switching its prone to evasdropping and if you use software controllers then the systems are inoperable with other vendors devices.

Storage abstraction can be used for cost savings in case of consolidation of infrastructure post M & A.

Technology CoE

There are good economic cycle periods and the bad ones. Similarly there are technology cycles. Like when a new technology is introduced in the market and especially if it is a radical new version then it is damn difficult to find skilled knowledge workers who can disseminate and deliver the technological processes to new products. So what is the solution.

The solution is to set up a technological CoE ( Centre Of Excellence ). This centre can be used to have a minimum of 15-25 people who develop organisation repatoire of best practices and processes to be used for scaling the product development. When skill repository is developed fully then you can train more people on the same technology and set up a full fledged profit centre around the technology. Although the CoE would first be just a cost centre but later it will become a source of business growth and cash revenues.

Also you could milk the concept further by setting up a customer centric CoE which could be used to create a interface for customers to excel at their business by outsourcing their technical requirements.

Data Intensive Applications and Technologies

Storage requirements are increasing of late. With the advent of HD video technology more and more storage is required for applications like film making. One camera footage of a HD Video would be roughly 1 TB . Huge by any known standards. Similarly all the footage of all cameras would add up to Humonguos ( PetaByte = 1024 Tera Bytes ). Great so any advance in storage technology is surely going to help digital cinema. Also any 80 core processor or Core 2 80 Processors would make rendering and encoding of digital content more faster and accurate.

Best of luck to the film fraternity of the world.

Technology And Security

The security of web sites are more compromised today than ever, what with applications using cloud computing are ever increasingly using the net to connect to the partners and stakeholders like the suppliers, distributers and sometimes even the end users themselves. This collaboration on one hand increases the synergistic effect of business and increased revenues but also results in incresed threat vis - a -vis internal threats and external threats like social engineering and phishing of data.

So if you are into Extra Corporate enterprise relationships make sure that you take the requisite steps to stem the menace of compromised security. Make sure you are connected to stakeholder through secure VPN and make sure there are right security policies in the organisation to curb social engineering.

Occasionally take the help of ethical hackers to proactively scout your business site and server for vulnerabilities and periodically conduct a security audit to check the security readiness and DR and BC readiness.

Strategical Role that Technology plays in OD

OD includes managing and developing people which are the most critical asset of any company. OD includes better productivity and human capital utilization which can be achieved through technology applications deployment. E-learning can be used to cost effectively train the Knowledge Workers and increase their contribution to achievement of organizational goals.

Technology can provide strategic tools to the workforce to work smart with gadgets like PDA and UMPC’s creating a direct connection with SCM which captures almost live data making decision making at the top level management more relevant and timely resulting in heavy corporate profits.

Technology Companies and Depreciating Dollar

Indian Software exporting and Outsourcing companies are the ones which are surely going to suffer due to a depreciating dollar. Their top line and margins are surely going to get thin and profitability going to go down. The companies take recourse to lobbying with the govt. to take steps to stop appreciation of Rupee against the dollar. But the greater good of Indian Technological companies lie in an appreciating Rupee. As it would increase the net purchasing power of the individuals as well as the companies. This will result in an ever improving and alluring domestic market.

The US companies which outsource to the Indian Tech. firms will soon loose the arbitrage enjoyed by the former and result in making outsourcing untenable to the US companies. All in all Indian companies stand to gain relatively more in overall terms compared to the US technological companies. Also the employability of US Technological workers improve as a whole.

Mobile Advertisement Technology

India and the World is seeing rapid rise in mobile connections. In developed countries like the US , UK and Europe there is a rapid rise in number of cells a household or an individual uses. This results in massive opportunities arising for the technological innovations in marketing.

If one has a database of mobile users who are customers , then they can be easily contacted for customized product and service offerings. Payments can be made via Cellular mode. Cells can be used for marketing products in a customized way.

In Bangalore Malls actually use BlueTooth servers to target customers with offers which can be downloaded from Hoardings giving the exact details of offer and customized offers according to customer purchase history. Sales van be closed more easily and turnover can be increased. Also movie tickets of Multiplexes can be booked through Cells. All in All cell is turning out to be a massively important device for marketers to reach customers by leveraging mobile technology. With high tech devices being churned out at least prices this segment is only likely to see further growth. With digital distribution of entertainment content like Audio and Video on demand cornering a greater market share of telecom companies in India in the near future.

R&D and Technology

R&D outstrips Product Development and Adoption

Lots of research in Technology sphere, like Robotics and Consumer Electronics and Durables. Also Wireless technology, but adoption is slow. There are various reasons for this slow adoption. One of them being lots of funds already sunk into previous technologies which are unable to give the required ROI. In such a scenario the telecom companies are not wishing to invest in expensive infrastructure required for costly upgrades which benefits only the consumer and not the companies who invest. And any company leave alone technology companies exist for the sole purpose of making profits.

Take robotics, Research Pilot successful models are available but are not cheap enough for commercial exploitation. And also in the case of technology is not even properly tested for safety of commercial use with human beings. Also what will happen to human living if AI applications take over the mundane technological task. Also many Human beings would not be capable of higher level jobs which they may be offered in absence of mundane jobs.

Ethics and Technology

Ethical Dimensions of Technological Products

Apple allows people to use software updates to unlock its i-Phone to be used with other than AT&T. Apple has taken no steps to proactively dissuade users from adopting this practice. Have you ever given a thought to why they allow people to hack their i-Phones. Well I tried to put some pressure on my mind.

Do they want to increase their i-Phone sales at any cost to make it another block buster record breaking product like the sibling product i-Pod and place it in the same league. Or are they having the technology to fill the gap. Or they just want people who love apple products to use them at any cost giving them viral publicity at no additional cost.

News You Can Use

ConvertTube.com

Want to convert your videos into formats like mpg, mov or any other format while downloading itself from any site. Just add your URL to the video to the textbox on the homepage and choose a format and click on download in requisite format on the click of a button.

A cool utility to change the format of video.

Natural Language Processing

What is the future of technology. Is it a software development language in which you just list the goals and specify the language and programming paradigm to be used to get the software package ready in a jiffy. Well while such a scenario may be possible in a few or one decade with AI and Expert Systems making fast inroads into our increasingly technological existence. While vested interests and ethical considerations may make it possible to employ Human beings in future in mundane tasks like upkeep of the computer and peripherals.

Our first step in that direction is to create computers that can understand native languages with all its verbose nature. Search engines are being designed which can understand natural language. There have been defeated attempts at it, but still many ventures keep trying the lucrative segment as keyword search is not as user friendly to the non geeks.

University of California is also designing a Search Engine which annotates songs based on inputs from human inputs form a online game Listen Game, which will allow users to search songs based on attributes rather than artiste or label. Like you are in a mood to hear Funky songs, just type Funky songs of Beatles, and lo presto you have the results in front of you. Cool innovation I say.

Birds Can See Magnetic Field

Size Is not related to technological advancement is not only just proved by the fact that migratory birds can see magnetic field and use it as a compass to guide them through out the globe. Miniaturization and excellence can go hand in hand.

It only proves just like nature may have designed microcosmic life which may be very small in size but may be having Intelligence very high compared to that of a human being. I am sure future research may reveal such fantastic revelations. Maybe we are Co-inhabiting Earth with many other microcosmic intelligent species we are not aware of and they may have a role in our destiny.

Safe Banking Transaction Technology

In the IT security market and Banking Transactions online new technology needs to be developed all the time to beat hackers who make it a habit to regularly dupe investors of millions of dollars of money, by fraudelent transactions like phishing et al.

Tokens are one way of having safe banking transactions. One Time Password tokens are used to generate one time passwords which are safer than static passwords. Also smart tokens can be used to embed a chip in the token which authenticates user to the web site of the bank. Technological advances which makes life of hapless customers go a bit easy. Thats all about hardware security device and safe banking transactions.

More later.

Phantom Cell

Mobile phones can cause phantom sensation. A recent study has shown that people are feeling their cell to be an integral part of their personality. If they are not carrying a phone, still they can feel the presense of the phone. The use of cell phone is almost approaching the levels of Addiction in people using it. More ever recent studies have shown that cell phones are harmful to the hearing capability of a Human Being esp. children. Also this growing addiction problem is only going to accentuate in the future with call rates dropping due to competition with internet phone and also internet phone plans availoable in countries like the US.

I suggest people should use mobile technology to leverage their relationships and business and should not become slaves to technology.

Technology Can be Dangerous

Already there is a serious problem caused due to untested technological products like Cells which have proved to be harmful to the consumers. Further with werable computers and virtual reality advances being made at an astronomical rate. New types of crimes like Hijacking the brain of a Human Being and doing various acts with it and showing them a different dream while they go through some other physical process takes place.

I think VR technology is a greater danger to the Humanity compared to Robotic invasion envisioned of the future.

Previous blunders by great intellectuals of developed world includes the Y2K bug which causedbillions of dollars lost due to poor technological prognosis.

Unified Communications

With advent of increasingly new ways of communicating, like mobile, chat , e-mail et al there is a need to manage the interface across all these media. Let us think it this way. If you are at office you want to be contacted at office number on mobile, if you are at home you want to be contacted at your Home computer through E-Mail. So the result is there needs to be a way to manage your contact through various interfaces and gadgets.

This is achived through Unified Communications. What with Microsoft having a dedicated server for it although an integrated solution is still a distant dream.

Peer To Peer Learning and Technology

Peer To Peer learning can be enabled by using technology. Wiki's and Corporate blogs can be leveraged to create knowledge sharing and dissemination in organisation. It is a useful tool to document knowledge so that an organisational pool of knowledge can be created which can be used by ensuing employees.

Corporate blogs can be used to manage an interface with peers of other companies of the vertical to gain objective insights into working and challenges of technology in other companies. Any sharing of knowledge results in multiplier effect on the overall knowledge of the company.

The case for Branded PC Vis a Vis Assembled

Its but obvious, Branded PC's should be gone for. Why its just like asking why parents are better than neighbours. Well because they care more for you, and will be there for you at the time of disparity. Think it this way, like I mean people who have spent millions of dollars on product development and a whopping 6-8% of revenue in Advertisements are better supposed to understand customer care, they have better process and people to deal with and surely a better product and empathy.

Also they would not fly by the night and be there at the requisite time with features like the International travelers Warranty.

A Waterproof Notebook

Friends those were the days when PC were as large as a Big Building room, I am talking about Mainframes requiring a lot of space, maintenence and causing lot of noise and vibrations, required lot of cooling, and also lot of power.

But Matsushita took the effort on to the other direction this week by announcing its Waterproof and shock proof notebook PC. Now swim in the pool and chat or check e-mail. Or throw the laptop from the top of a building and get it in one peice at the bottom of the building.

Cool man, PC's are getting rugged is a good news as they can double up as a portable entertainment device and an object of business transactions. Also more power packed and efficient m/c's mean more productivity at work.

Is technology evolving too slowly

Is technology evolving too slowly. I mean I think by the pace and the momentum of technological advancement in and around the globe,( esp in AI ) by now we should have had an application for automatically developing a package in a specified language with just goals being set for technical specifications and performance requirements, and presto withi a few minutes 10 -15 different avatars are ready, pre tested for your final approval.
Humanm beings just exercise finer judgement and nuances t choose the software they like. I think current technology is enough to support such unctionality. Then is it just lack of thought and creativity that these applications are not developed, or is it to feed xillions of Cyber Coolies in earning their livelyhood.

An Innovative Company

Although Apple was not as successful as Microsoft in marketing its MAC PC's but it is well known to be a very innovative company. It created blockbuster product called I-Pod which created ripples in the IT market. Apple also recently unveiled Safari browser which despite its bugs is the fastest browser in the market, twice faster than IE and 1.6 times faster than Firefox. It proves how the best product in the market is beatable by the right competitor and right R&D in place.

Microsoft has also recently been nimble in marketing through innovation, its XBOX 360 was a very successful product.

Portable DVD Players

Now entertainment is available on the move. Use a portable battery powered DVD player and watch favorite content and Photo's in the comfortable precincts of Car, or trains. Technology with evolution has made it damn convenient to access entertainment at the click of a button. IPods have miniaturised to a great extent. They are stylish and elegant in look and easy to use. Also they are very power efficient and available in various colors and also many high storage models.

So guys enjoy the fruits of technology.

Technology and Obsolescence

You get a DVD which can play dual layer DVD, next day sony unveils a DVD format Blu - Ray compliant DVD. Now your yesterdays investment becomes a total waste. So one has to plan their technology investment in avery meticulous way. Be it a business be it a home. One needs to be aware of the emerging technologies and their life cycles. One needs to be prepared to dispose of old products in favor of new products. Emotions should not be carried and agility should be shown in adopting new products.

These new products have their own advantages, it could be better performance or convenience or energy efficiency. So say good bye to your old product today.

The Semantic Web

After web 2.0 did it all with sharing and collboration of data , work is on to bring web 3.0 into being. It would be the web in which programs will interact and understand all types of information and will be able to classify , combine and filter data and present data to users in a way which will be most useful to the user. The m/c data interface will make manageability of data more simpler and TeraBytes of Data in fact Exabytes would no longer give pain to the user.

Technology Obsolescence at Home

If you are not rich and you just bought a computer you aer going to be stuck with it for atleast two years. You may go in for a upgrade, but buying a new computer may just be out of question. What with some one who just bought Core 2 Duo last week and sees a Core 2 Quad 8 core computer the next day in news paper with another 40% improvement in performance. As a user you have to learn to live with technology obsolescence at home . You could obviously come up with a innovative solution, sell the current system to a less needy like Primary School kid and go in for the latest master blaster computer. Or then upgrade or wait for another year before buying your dream m/c , which would not be so after a couple of week or months . What with intel is already working on a new system with 80 cores and research on on new alternate technology and nano technology.

SMS Marketing Technology

WEll mobile is certainly as ubiquitous as human beings on Earth. So why not use this telecom technology to market. Well it is even being used successfully in developing countries like India. Mobiles can be used to send a marketing message and special offers to users who have signed up for receiving special offers through web sites or can even be used by the company to make the customer initiate an initial contact with the company. For example SMS to 7575 to receive more details. In return of the message the comapany could send an e-mail with details to an intelligent mobile owner or a representative of the company could call up the customer and take up the issue with him/her.

So opening up a new and easy channel to contact ( Touch Point Spectrum) with the company would obviously result in the companies generating more of enquiries and more closed sales .

Annonymous Bloggers

John Mackey CEO of Whole Foods Market did it for eight years successfully and got caught. Cases reported often hide the fact and underreport the total number of occurances which may be found in the real world. Blogging annonymously in favour of one's own company and attcking the competitors strategies and business models. In other words you can buy media through PR firms but not able to buy the Blog Media. Or can you do it by assuming fake identities and attacking your competitors while creating a viral good word of mouth about your own company.

Although unethical but who cares about ethics now-a -days. So an important lesson in corporate marketing through blog is assume annonymous identity and become your own companies staunch supporters.

Flash Face

There is this utility on the net at
http://flashface.ctapt.de/
You can create faces by choosing eyebrows, eyes, hairs, jaws and lips et al from a selection of assortments and move it using drag and drop and create a face. I tried to create a female face and ended up creating a male face and also could save it only on the Site, couldn't import it to share with you all.

Go to Google/More/Labs/Google Music Trends. It shows what is the popular english genre songs among google talk users, ie if you are interested in English Music. This weeks top 20 songs are given below,


Rank
Title
Artist
Change
1
What I've Done
Linkin Park
--
2
In The End
Linkin Park
--
3
Don't Matter
Akon
+1
4
Say It Right
Nelly Furtado
-1
5
Boulevard Of Broken Dreams
Green Day
--
6
You're Beautiful
James Blunt
+2
7
Girlfriend
Avril Lavigne
--
8
Numb
Linkin Park
-2
9
Hey There Delilah
Plain White T's
+2
10
Chasing Cars
Snow Patrol
--
11
The Reason
Hoobastank
+1
12
How To Save A Life
The Fray
+1
13
Bleed It Out
Linkin Park
-4
14
Wake Me Up When September Ends
Green Day
+2
15
Jhoom
SHANKAR MAHADEVAN
-1
16
Somewhere I Belong
Linkin Park
+3
17
Leave Out All The Rest - Web Search
Linkin Park
-2
18
Stairway to Heaven
Led Zeppelin
New!
19
Hands Held High
Linkin Park
+1
20
Two Princes
Spin Doctors
New!

Spammers get Innovative

Every body in management circles talk about innovation so why should spammers be behind. After using text message for spamming 90% of your mailbox and costing Rs 50,000 per employee per year lost in productivity, they defeated the filters developed for them and ceated Image spam with non - unique altered signatures to overwhelm the filters. Now they are out with a new system, spam in a link.
This new form of spam already reached 4% of total spam. Resulting in spam being able to fool the security filters again.
Guys are spammers not tech savvy.

A Ring Mouse

A new type of mouse is being developed which would be soon in market. The mouse is a miniature ring which can be worn on the finger and has 5 microphones to sense the movement of the hand. Depending on the motion of the hand the pointer moves on the screen and if you point it translates into a click.

Yet to hit the market I think this is a cool Innovation which deserves full marks on miniaturisation. My only apprehension is that the adverse affect of the ring as in the case of effect of mouse on wrists may not have been studied.

Chip Technology Nanoscale

Moores Law states that every two years transisitors on the chip double. Which has been the case up till now, but experts believe that in the future the same may not be possible.

Current chips are of 90nm scale. research is on on 65 nm and 45 nm scale chips. Recently IBM and Intel have started to focus on the 32 nm category and chips based on the same would be available in the market soon. In future research would be focussed on 22 and 16 nm chips.

What is all this talk about Nanoscale chips. This is the size of transistors, as the transistor size decreases more and more transistors can be packed on to the chip and energy requirement goes down and speed and powerfulness of the chip increases. Also there is economy of scale in productivity gains which result into chip cost dropping and the gains being passed on to the end consumer.

Doodle Seek Your Search

A US based company Imaginestics has developed a new search engine which searches a catalog of 3d images using a rough engineering sketch. This sketch is used to compare with an online catalog of 6000 parts at http://www.3d-seek.com/ portal.

The search engine is supposed to help both the manufacturing companies and the retail customer. manufacturing comapnies deal with elephantine number of parts and shapes and remembering the codes and technical names of these products itself is a great headache and this search engine is made to make the job easier for the customer. Th esearch is completed in seconds compared to earlier searchs which could take hours to weeks to conduct search.

There are two obvious advantages of using this new system.

1. If comapanies want to hide the details of patented designs and only display on demand then it can certainly help the users and companies to hide the design details.

2. Also it is found that 10-16% of user parts are ordered via multiple vendors in global corporations causing millions or dollars down the drain in duplicated efforts. Duplicate designs are drawn from scratch resulting in wastage of time and effort. 3d-seek can be used to keep a track of parts and inventories in multilocation companies. It can also be used in a single location company to keep a track of spare parts.

When you submit the doodle ( Sketch ) a 3d image which can be rotated and viewed of all the parts which match the sketch is thrown up.

Is skilled workforce available for Technology Companies

There has been a lot of talk about what should be the Academic-Industry linkage in order to provide the rightly skilled technical personnels to the companies. Some say Industry experienced people shold conduct lectures and be involved in framing of the syllabus of the Academic Institutions.

Some Institutions react by including a blank semister whose content is decided by the experts at the beginning of the Semester by looking at the trends and upcoming technologies.

But I have my own view that what is learnt on job can not be picked up through any academic project or live project work. Hense the earlier a person is involved in actual job, ie on the job the better.

Also concepts and problem solving should be fostered in the candidates, so that they are not afraid when they approach real life problems.

Taser Wielding Robots Remote Controlled

Human life is precious. That is one Maxim every body agrees to. So what technologies can be used to make human life more safer. One is using Robots for Combat and dangerous operations like dealing with terrorists and hostage situations. In the same pursuit a US comany has developed a Robot which can be remote controlled and made to fight unscruplous elements. Lets take it this way a robot equipped with taser can be remote controlled and made to fight terrorists.

Taser is a kind of Stun Gun used to stun clients who are out to kill the humanity. Also they can be used to diffuse mines in Iraq and Afghanistan. As long as robot doesn't decide when to shoot armed by AI experts believe that the technology is safe.

Hitachi out with a 1 TB Hard Disk

There are disks of 150 GB and 500 GB already in market from sea gate. Now this 1 TB 3 1/2 inch 7200 rpm drive from Hitachi. It has 32 mb cache and costs 29,300. Although 2 500 GB hard disks would cost you only a 13,000 Rs cost and works cheaper.

The hard disk is consisting of 5 platters, emits more heat and has higher response time . But compare it with this it has 10 times the density of ordinary disks as it uses a PMR ( Perpendicular Magnetic Recording ) compared to longitudunal recording.

All in all computers are all set to store Data Mines in Them.

Airchord Player Web 2.0 on Mobile

Now using Airchord Player from Air Chord you can blog, listen to FM radio, TV, Form your own networks, Juke Box and lots more of business applications like Video Conferencing on the move can be accessed via your Mobile.

This is serious progress over previous Mobile softwares where you can use your mobile also for searching and browsing in addition to the features mentioned above. In particular using Video Conferencing on the move just using your mobile is a particularly cost effective and powerful feature. Business users can rejoice on this and also other features match the profile of those who are particularly keen on using mobile for entertainment.

Remote Security and Management of Laptops

A software is expected to hit the North American market by year end and then in India which can be used for security and management of Laptops. More than 50% of PC's being sold are now laptops, and more than 80% of companies surveyed have lost laptops with sensitive data in them. So what is the solution. There is a 3G technology based method being developed which wipes out sensitive data from the laptop if it is lost even if it is switched off mode. The said development is going to benefit scores of companies in saving their sensitive data.

The said method can also be used for remote software upgrade and patch management of laptops of mobile workforce which has till now been a very costly and time consuming affair.

Santa Rosa Intel Platform for Laptops

After Centrino which was low energy low heat emitting platform for laptop Intel has come up with Santa Rosa platform for laptops. The beauty of the system is its high Wi Fi throghput which has increased from its previous 50 MBPs to now almost 300 MBPS which is a cool six times increase in the speed of the Wi Fi Connection. All well and to add more to the fun it has ready boost and ready drive features of Vista which uses flash memory to increase performance and memory of the computer. In santa rosa platform ready boost ie in built in the system . Which is called turbo memory. It can store frequently used programs in the memory ( Flash chip ) itself and increases the speed of program execution and also reduced access to hard disk saves energy.

Go get it now.

SaaS can confound Pirates

There is a solution to piracy, having only registered members access to the software which is stored on a server. The SaaS advantage. Only those users who are registered would ultimately gain by it. Stumping the very roots of piracy. But then large organisations prefer licenced sorftware due to third party trust considerations and don't go in for SaaS. Also SaaS is suitable only for certain applications which are costly and hense drive small organisations to adopt them. The pirates could only do well to try and hack the system for which alerts could be set up easily using normal programming practices.

Location Based Services

They are a hit in the US and Europe but yet to make an inroad into the conservative Indian Technology Customers. Well services can be expected on your mobile to locate buddies when you reach a hangout who are nearby and free. It can be used to inform you of discount on your favorite items if you are passing by a mall. It could give you an alert of your favorite band playing in a location nearby and a discounted ticket for which you could pay and confirm online.

All these technologies use the GPS technology of the phone to track where you are located and depending on the free and subscribed services which you have subscribed to , it would search a CRM database according to your preferences and make automatic SMS's and calls , ultimately giving you an overall better consumer experience.

India, good services are just a will away.

Now you can win Grammy

Softwares have been used for long for creating digital music using loops, now a new technology has come up which uses Pitch Correction Technique to corect slightly off key notes without resorting to a retake by the artist. The software from Yamaha can be used for Pitch Correction.

Previously techniques are avialable to create Music using digital loops, called Loopology. Now even if you are not a great singer you can manage an album or two, without slogging for that perfect recording.

Good Luck.

VAS to create revenues for TELCO's

When the telecom companies launched the Mobile services they reaped cool booty just by the call charges as in the heydays as they could charge exorbitant amounts for the incoming as well as outgoing calls . But times changed and later SMS turned out to be a moneyspinner for them.
VAS is all set to be the next blockbuster revenue generator for these companies and would keep the telco's Juggernaut rolling ahead with high momentum. In this direction Mauj has roped in Sameera reddy the lass of tinsel town to create value added services around the bollywood theme. Currently the market is worth 300 Cr Rs in 5-7 years it is set to grow to 30,000 Cr. Rs. in India. The services would be Wall papars of the Lass and using her voice in alarms and reminders et al to create interest in the general public and also to create higher revenue.

Robots that Probe

Robots would now be used as probes by Scintists to probe Arctic ocean for new life. Two robotic probes Puma and jaguar each priced at $4,50,000 would be used to probe 5000 metres depth under the sea just 5-10 metres above the sea bed to look for new life hithherto undiscovered. It is said that there are hot springs in arctic region which is hot bed for new life forms to be formed there.
There are great chances of losing the Robotc vahicles but the scintists are going ahead with their mission as the cost benefit analysys justifies the same. The probe will take photographs and collect samples from the area for the scintists to further research and drive conclusions.

Mobile Computing Now Affordable

There were times just a few years back when a laptop cost a fortune, but now things are changing for the better. Notebooks and laptops are lot more affordable come packed with the power which would shame even the best of the class server class PC's.
Laptops are powered with 5 in 1 card readers and core 2 duo latest processors. They have every thing from 533 MHz DDR2 memory to dual layer DVD writer. And what more they are even highly affordable also.
Notebooks and laptops are available in the range of 27,000 to 45,000 INR. If you wanted to go mobile then this is the time dude. Go ahead and make that purchase today.

Vista enhances XP Allure

It so happens that Vista requires a expensive hardware upgrade and also for old people its quite a task and steep learning curve to learn the news OS and its ways. So what can be done? People are demanding XP back for these and various other reasons. There are some bugs and it is not a great gaming OS for some.
Hense Dell which initially was planning of shelving the XP OS is now out with 6 laptops which have preloaded XP OS in them. To cater to the public demand for XP OS.
Also Microsoft plans to shelve selling the said OS XP from January 2008.

Brain Machine Interface

Voice interface is soon going to be a thing of the past. What with Hitachi Inc of Japan having developed a technology which can be used successfully for the pupose of interacting with Computer. It especially places the ability to physically challenged people to give commands and control the computer.

Previously there have been forays into the same area by US comapanies but it required a chip to be implanted inside the brain under the skull. But the news technology is a radical deviation from the previous research in which people only require to wear a head band with sensors weighing 1 Kg of wieght. Infrared rays are transmitted through the brain to map the blood movement and record activity of the brain. For example one person could use the Frontal Coprtex of ones brain which is used for problem solving and by doing some calculation there could make a train move or halt.

Cool but I say still crude. I think it should be able to read any text or graphical 2-d or 3-d image also from brain and directly input it into a editing software, then I think some progress would have been made. The presesnt system is just a crude achive ment of what would be possible in a year or two.

Nano Technology and Cancer

It has been found that nanoparticles can be used to cure cancer, spheres of nanomaterials coated with gold have to be injected in a patient showing cancerous tumours. These nano scale particles travel through blood and seep into tumours and collect there. Infrared light is used to detect the location of these tumours and then a certain higher intensity of Infrared light is used to convert this rays into heat by the spheres which destroy the cancerous cells. This technique has most limited side effects and is supposed to cure cancer like prostrate , skin and breast cancer apart from other types of cancers successfully.

N77 TV Phone

Nokia has recently unvieled a new N series phone. This phone consists of TV subscription and viewing functions. There is a dedicated TV viewing button. You can watch News, and Music plus other entertaining stuff while on the move. You can subscribe channels . You can view programme guide for 1 week ahead and also fix up reminders. The phone can remember the last channel you had been viewing. It is going to be first of its kind endeavour in India. It can be noted that mobile TV had made inroads into Japanese culture 3-4 years back. So India has to play the catch up game here at home turf.
The phone is going to have other regular features like the MP3 player, Camera, E-Mail, Calendar, Browsing and Contact list et al as a regular N series feature
Good going for Entertainment freaks.

Game Design and Us

Recently I was reading an article in a newspaper about game design science which is coming to be reckoned as a billion dollar industry in the recent times. What I read was that in a game first you need to conceptualise the design. That is what would be the characters of the game , what would be the logic, what would be different difficulty levels, and how would scoring be done. Cool one difference between the Movie Story board ( Used to represent the design ) and Game Story board which was given was that a movie storyboard is linear where as the game story board is multi path. Ie what happens if one partner in a multiple player game dies et al. Also after conceptualising the design and fixing the boundaries flow charts are made to chalk out the paths and control flow. The application design and role of gaming engine is decided. Then the actual programming is done.

It was indeed an interesting read.

Life is a Movie : Airtel Background Score

Airtel in India had come up with caller ringtone. Now it has innovated further and come up with a background score while you talk, the music plays. Now this is some out of the box thinking. Especially for the young couples who are romantically involved and for those who are married and still in love this is great news which will make their mundane talks more cheerful. The service is not even very costly and is affordable.Good going Airtel. But telco's watch that call quality and call drop rates before people switch over to VOIP or some other technology.

Unified Messaging : Meeboo

You are always trying to use IM for chat and voice chat purposes, You use Google Talk or Yahoo or MSN service. Some of your friends are on other networks. So what is to be done? One has to chat , has to chat.Meeboo.Com has come up with a unified messaging solution . It accepts Username and passwords of all your accounts and allows you to chat with all your friends on all the networks seamlessly. What is the result of this, you can do it through Meeboo client so if you have an old PC you need not have to load all Chat Softwares, only Meeboo client would be sufficient.Meeboo also have a wonderful chat widget which can be used to chat and socialise with your visitors. But my own reservation is that instead of third party endeavour interoperability should be the effort of the players involved in the technology

E-Commerce in India

Some interesting facts about e-Commerce in India . 2200 Crores of e-Commerce took place in India in 2006 and expected to touch 5500 Cr. a growth of 150% over 2006 is expected in 07-08.Some other interesting facts are that 88% of B2C customers are male, 86% are graduates , 24% are self employed. Well with various rural initiatives of Corp's and govt. of India, soon rural folks will effect these statistics. Also most of the business is in Music,Travel, Booking for Movies, Gifts, Computers and accessories, and Apparels segement.Online payment of bills is a big issue in India where local citizens consider Creadit card to be a unethical product and the same problem is being overcome through e-Cash * ITZ Cash ) and also throgh adoption of Debit Card as a mode of payment by some customers.Well another issue is that of tangibility and quality of goods sold throgh internet and the mindset, where established brands can play a major role.

Unified Communications: A new Paradigm

One has so many options of communication today VOIP , Fixed Line, E-Mail, IM, Mobile et al that one finds it very cumborsome to manage through the quagmire of gadgets and sometimes the very purpose of these gadgets which is to make communications easier for the user works at cross-angles and makes things difficult and complicated for user. In comes UC.UC uses a single client interface either through your Mobile , cellphone or smart phone to acces all these types of communication signals. The client software publishes your location , ie if you are at home or office and your preferred mode of communication. It also redirects the messges to the present client with which you are interacting at the present moment.So it is a good tool to make the job of Corporate Business Communications easier and hassle free for the users. Presently UC through phone is not available in India but it is expected to hit the market in Foreseeable future.

Google Trends

Google Trends can be accessed via

http://www.google.com/trends

You can type product or products separated by commas and compare the search across regions, countries and languages. The feature is a coll data mining tool in the hands of the end user and business users to find trends in various countris.For example if I type PC,Mobile in the box and find trends I get a Graphical representation of the comparison of the two terms used for search across the above categories. You could know which product is better by typing two or more products in a category. Marketers can use the information to their great benefit. I think this is one servcice for which eventually Google could charge the Business Community.

Robots that Map : Robotics

Domestic military and combat search operations can benefit with robots which are faster and more resposnsive to their environment and do not commit errors. Such robots are becoming possible thanks to the cutting edge research which is always on .
Robots which can map their environmental information and use it to find way in other parts of the same building or a office or home are being designed and tested. Suppose a particular building has the same type of design in all floors thana combat robot used for fighting terrorists or other hostage taken crisis could easily navigate in the maze and deliver their expected results.
Domestic robots could be fed with maps of their area of operation and could work better than they do with their sensor technology.
Also a team of Robots ( Say 4 ) could map an area faster and could share that info with other robots through wireless network and do better teamwork than humans.

Mobile PC Vs. UMPC

Will a Mobile PC be the future of World or the Ultra mobile PC. The debate is eternal. But people say that the learning curve for mobile computer would be easier to scale by commoners since they are comfortable and used to the Mobile interface. So will the Mobile PC become ubiquitous in the future. Yes it will say experts. But then there are people who say that existing applications can be easily modified to become avialble on UMPC whereas for mobile fresh applications have to be written. But I am sure that business men will understand that user needs have to dictate demand and not the other way round and that in future every BOP member will flaunt a Mobile PC with pride.Say what.

Web 3.0

Web 1.0 was with static publictaion of pages. Web 2.0 was dealing with interactive and dynamic web sites and also lot of colloborative user generated content and social networking in the fore. Now the advent of Web 3.0 is nearing us. It would provide us with Programs interacting with web content in such a way that all the data on the web would be available as Individual data resulting in ableness to process and classify and search and present the data well . It would result in a number of innovative web applications.Some of the endeavours which are already working in this field is Yahoo Pipes.The Jana, Google Base and the tagging process by our own IBIBO and del.icio.us et al.

Content Digitisation and Management

Content digitisation and Management is all set to change the IT landscape in India. With only a few governments like Andhra Pradesh and karnatka having gone in for e-Gov initiatives, this segment with rest of the state govt's following suit is all set to boom.One problem with this domain is that 95% of data which is typically being dealt with is unstructured in nature making it difficult to process it and derieve meaningful knowledge or trends useful for business from it.Also most of content is in different formats and is difficult to have a integrated view of it making the job of creating meaning ful MIS reports for Management difficult. With coming of Artificial Intelligence and Web 3.0 the same tasks are set to become more easier to achieve.

Autonomic Computers

Autonomous systems being developed by Dell are PC's which have the following properties.

1. Self Healing : It detects software errors and tries to correct or fix it. Hard ware errors are notified to the user.

2. Self Protection : It will take care of applying latest patches with out users worrying for the same.

3. Self Optimisation : It takes care that all devices are working in optimum manner.

4. Self Configuration : It results in automatic configuration of computers which till yesteryears proved to be a big head ache for users.

Also it is similar to AI system but a bit inferior or less demending technology compared to AI. It is just like our Human bionic system. How it functions without our knowledge.

SaaS and India

Generally big enterprises go in for licenced software due to security and convenience . Also there i sthe feel good factor of being in control.But what about SME organisations . Can they afford the luxury of above mentioned features. Obviously no. B'cos affordability for small organistions is a big issue. Also they can not have expensive skilled staff required for manning and maintaining these applications.
Hense they can go for SaaS. Although SaaS has not picked up as a movement in India but SME's are adopting it for the purpose of CRM and Enterprise Apps.

NVIdia Graphics Adapter

YOu go to a shop and just like Intel inside , its written NVIdia Inside. What does it mean and what is its implications. The implications are as follows.

7900 gx2 Adapter High end direct x9.0 compatible

8500GT low end directx10 compatible

8600 GT(S) high end directx 10 compatible

8800 GTS Best for gaming and video slightly expensive

NVIdia and ATI based video adapter have onboard memory and can be used for better gamimg and video experince. Various software requires compatibility with Direct x 9 , 9.0c,10 et al. Check out before buying computer.

Lenovo's New Thinkpads

These models are light, having intel core 2 duo processor, good clock speeds of 1.8 GHz and also better WiFi connectivity range and also improved battery life of 12 hrs. Throghput in WIFi mode is 30% higher and range is also improved. IT has enhanced security with password protected hard disk and external ports which can be locked.GOOD model to buy.

Google Gears

If you have witnesses an erratic internet connection you will only be glad that Google came up with its new application, Google Gears. It can be used to make internet access offline. That is you could use Google APPS even if the net is down and then when service is restored you could SYNCHRONISE the server with the data which is stored locally till then. How does it achive this, through a browser open source plug in.Long live off line web access.

Data in a Card

Many times while buying a PC or Laptop you may have come across DaTa Card reader or drive. Well it is a drive in which one can put a Data Card. A data card is flash memory in the size of Credit Card. It is slightly expensive than pen drive and also performance may be a bit less. But it is cool and slick looking and the inthing in storing Data now-a-days.

Robots galore

A toddler robot is being developed in japan. 33 Kgs 4.2 feet. A bit big at delivery. Also robots have been developed which by using actuators in liew of muscles can change facial expressions to 36 different expressions also developed in japan. I wonder why Japan is where most innovation takes place. Are other human beings dumb?

E-Commerce facts

E-Commerce is divided into B2B and B2C . In India e-travel forms 40% of total B2C commerce. 90% of b2b business is formed by e-procurement. The total retial market in India is about 289 billion dollars of which about .3% or 1 billion dollars is the share of e-commerce. and 3% is the share of organised retail. In US the share of e-Commerce is 3.2% of about 1 trillion of retail business there.

Multimedia Fingerprinting

YouTube now owned by Google carries out Audio sampling of their content for record label companies to curb piracy. Now it also is planning to do Video Fingerprinting to come up with technique to find if a uploaded video is copyright protected. Initially it is carrying it out for media houses, Time Warner and also Disney, later they wish to carry it out for other major media companies.Any thing in favor of good original content is only good news for entertainment starved globe.

Augmented Reality

When real and virtrual world are intermixed together, we get what we call the Augmented Reality. It is similar to virtual reality but with the addition of live real time information. It has various applications like in medicine, robotics, mobile applications, military and Movies.
Let us take the axample of Movies. How augmented reality can help in creating better movie experience. You could crate studios and rent them to people and earn cash . Or you could use these virtual studios and place the artists in them so that the cost of a real studio is saved. This is but one of the number of applications possible with augmented reality.
Also suppose you have a mobile you could use GPS and sensors on mobile and make the mobile experience a memorable one for user by adding value added service like locating which location a video camera is poointing at and if for eg it is a resturant you display the Menu and wait time to the user.
Wow, this is really some news.

Techno Mirror

A new technology has come up which can be used by cloth merchants very efficiently. It will making shopping smart and result in higher footfall,Customer Satisfaction and increasing revenues for the Company.
A mirror which has a PC at the backend with , RFID reader , which automatically detects the cloth which you wear and guide you with matching clothing and cool accessories which go with the system. So you can find out all your favorite items in the store and not even require a salesman assistance to make your choice. A assistant gets you your required clothes and accessories. The price and other details can be displayed at the Mirror which is a Surface computer.
Now this is real pathbreaking innovation to the delight and profit of both the customer and the cloth ratailer.

Regulating Blogosphere

Recent happenings in Blogosphere of US and some violence directed against Bloggers in US has raised this issue. My take is Blogosphere is just like any other Media, with vested interests and truth ingrained in it. Let the public have the discretion to decide what is true and what is not. I think public is not thinking enough to dig out truth but not unthinking enough not to know truth from lie. Cool but vested interests and lobbying would always be there. I think people should have the courage to laugh off grapevine as a good cassandra effort. Some magazines like B&E from IIPM even publish regular Cassandra columns prominently of Noam Chomsky.What is your take.